CHAPEL HILL – Abortion safety laws make it “more dangerous for the black woman’s body.” Republican lawmakers “want kids to die.” Conservatives “are trying to take the U.S. hostage” and hope to “destroy our public school system.”

That’s just a sample of some of the vitriol spewed Thursday night at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, which played host to a meeting of Scholars’ for North Carolina’s Future, a group of secular-progressive college professors who have helped lead, along with the NAACP and AFL-CIO, weekly “Moral Monday” protests at the state capitol over the last several months.

The Moral Monday movement is a massive and disruptive weekly civil disobedience demonstration, and it has become somewhat of a spectacle in North Carolina, with liberal activists using it as a platform to rally against the Republican-held majority in the General Assembly and its approval of issues such as voter-ID laws and fiscal responsibility on public education.

The panel was billed around campus as a chance to learn what Moral Mondays are really all about, and see how they “fit in with past social movements.” Before the panel at the Global Education Center at UNC Chapel Hill began, many in the audience of about 165 people discussed their experiences during protests at the Raleigh statehouse.

Several openly bragged about their arrests, fights with cops, and the help with legal entanglements they’ve received from the NAACP. More than 900 arrests have occurred since the protests launched in April. As the audience – a mostly white, elderly group – waited for the meeting to begin, they also talked with impassioned contempt about conservatives. About a dozen students attended the event, which was heavily publicized in the Gender Studies and Journalism departments.